Wasting my time for mom

My mother called last Saturday and asked for a favor. I don't mind doing my mom a favor. I just don't see that I should have to waste the whole day to do it.

My day went something like this:

I get out of bed and do the usual stuff while I wait for my husband to get out of bed. This doesn't take as long as usual, because on Saturday he has to work earlier than most other days. So I read the "news" on Yahoo while he takes a shower. I don't have a bath right then, there isn't time, but that's okay, cause I had a bath just before going to bed the night before. I brush my teeth and get dressed.

He is soon dressed and such, and we go get a McSomething for breakfast. We then come back home, make sure that he has everything he needs for the day, pack his lunch, etc.... He leaves at about 8.

I water the plants and look at a few things on eBay. At almost 9 I still haven't had a bath. I figure that I should get a few more things done outside before I do that. I'm still trying to remove two trees from the backyard, and I've cut down a large bush in the front yard, so I have this almost daily chore of cutting branches down into smaller pieces and tying them up for removal. There's not much point in taking a bath before I get this done, as I would just need another bath after.

I'm thinking that before I do any really hard work (and getting really sweaty and really needing that bath) I should go to Home Depot. In my head I start organizing my day. I'll go to Home Depot first, while I'm still clean, and buy string and check for clearance paint and lumber in the scrap pile. If I find lumber, that will be a lot of work, work results in sweat, things that result in sweat should be done before taking a bath. So Home Depot first. Then the rest of the outdoor work. Then the bath. Then lunch. Then indoor work that will probably not result in sweat. Then at some point I'll probably go to my brother's place. Then after all of that I might need another bath before bed, just because it's June and it's Texas and it's hot, even if you don't do that much stuff that usually results in sweat.

So at just about 9 I have a mental schedule of my day in my head, and I'm getting my keys out so I can go, and just before I leave the phone rings.

My mother doesn't feel well. She hasn't felt well all week and should probably have gone to the doctor earlier. But she didn't do that, she waits till Saturday to decide she needs a doctor, and she can't see her regular doctor on Saturday so she'll have to go to the minor emergency clinic type place.

Seeing someone other than her regular doctor probably isn't going to do much good, but she has decided that she really needs to go, and she has insurance that will pay, so she's going. She wants me to drive her to the clinic.

The clinic is right next to the Home Depot. Not only do I not mind doing my mother a favor, this happens to be where I'm going anyway. And I now feel better about the plan to go there, as earlier I'd wondered if it was a waste of gas just to go looking for clearance stuff. I could probably get the string someplace else.

My mother doesn't want to leave right away. She wants to take a bath first.

My mother is one of those people who always takes a bath first, even before going to the doctor. The is because a.) having a bath almost always feels good, and b.) my mother is one of those people who thinks that when you feel bad you should get up anyway and do all the stuff that you would have done if you felt good, and maybe while you're doing that you'll sort of forget that you feel bad. So maybe having a bath would really make her feel better, and maybe she'd stop feeling bad and not even need to go to the clinic.

But I'm thinking that she's sick and that she really does mean she's just going to take a bath first. I know that on a normal day (when she is not sick and asking for something other than a ride to the doctor) that the delay is going to be two or even three hours, and that I should say no, or that I should agree to whatever she's asking only if we have a set time later in the day and I can get my work done first. Usually, if she wants to do something at 9 she won't really want to go anywhere til 11 or 12. But I'm thinking that she's sick and that she's not going to be putting on makeup and doing her hair and such, or whatever it is that she does for those two or three hours. I'm thinking that she's literally going to take a bath and brush her teeth and get dressed and comb her hair, and that she'll be calling me back at about 9:30.

So I agree. My mother is sick, and I'll do her a favor, but it is early in the day and I'll probably still have time to do some of the stuff I'd planned to do before lunch.

I don't take a bath myself. All of the earlier reasoning and plans still apply, I'm just delaying for half and hour or so. And I don't even know if it's going to take that long. She's sick, she might be in a hurry, and she might call back very soon.

I watch TV for about half an hour.

I remember that there's stuff in the car that can't be in the car if I'm to have a passenger. The bag of clothes that I keep intending to drop off at Goodwill is still in the front seat. The stuff I bought at the garage sale two weeks ago is still in the back seat. Other stuff is in the floor. I've totally forgotten about it. I never have passengers. I just don't think about it anymore.

I run outside and look at the mess. A lot of it is junk that I don't really know what to do with. Some it is actual trash that needs to be thrown away. But I don't have time to sort it out. My mom needs me, and she'll be calling soon. I get a container, shovel everything in that I can, dump everything on the living room floor, and take the container back to the car and shovel in more stuff.

I find some glasses of the prescription before this one. I had wondered where those were. And here they were in a hard case in the front seat of my car, most days inches away from me, unseen. But I don't have time to do anything other than notice what they were and shovel them into the container. Then I take the container into the house and put it on the living room floor.

Okay, that was work. Not a lot of work, but it was starting to get warm outside. So the result of working outside when it is warm is--sweat. I don't like it. It isn't much sweat, but I don't like it. I haven't planned to have a bath this early, but now I want one. I decide that I can't have one, there isn't time. I have a Coke and watch more TV. The sweat dries up and probably isn't noticed by anyone but me. I don't think that I smell bad or anything. I remember to check the answering machine just in case my mom called in those few minutes that I was outside making sweat. Nothing. I go back to watching TV.

Sometime later I notice that it is about 11. I am sort of halfway mad at my mom and halfway wondering if her guts exploded and she's bleeding to death on the bathroom floor. Maybe I should call her.

But, she does finally call me. She is ready. She wanted to call and make sure I was still at home before she called the clinic.

Okay.

She calls back. There's about a two hour wait at the clinic. But, she has heard that before, and she knows that she can "sign in" online, and that she can wait at home for the clinic to call just before it is her turn.

Okay, so I've just wasted two hours of my day because I thought she was really sick and needed to go to the clinic. But she wasn't that sick or she would have wanted to go at 9 or 9:30. And now I find out that she can do something online to reduce the time in the waiting room, but she didn't think that it was important enough to do that earlier, so there's probably going to be another two hours of waiting.

I don't ask her why she didn't do this online thing as soon as she got out of the tub, but that is what I'm wondering.

She says that she'll call back.

I still haven't had that bath. I still haven't done any work, other than getting all that stuff out of my car. And I can't either do my outside work or have a bath, because she thinks that it might be a while before she calls, but she doesn't really know that for sure. And I really don't want to start anything else that I would have to stop in the middle and/or put things away if she called.

I'm thinking that I should eat something. In my earlier mental schedule of the day, I either got things done well before lunch, or if I had taken mom to the clinic when I imagined she might have got done right about lunch time and we might have had lunch together. But now if I have lunch with mom it will be after noon, or even after 1, or even later than that. So I have some soup, and that way I won't starve, but I can still have lunch later with mom if she wants to do that.

While I'm heating up the soup she calls back, and says that she feels better. She still wants to go to the clinic, but she thinks that she feels up to driving by herself. She suggested that I go on and do whatever it was that I was going to do, and then if I get done in time I can drive her after, but if I don't get done in time she'll go by herself.

No, either I am driving her or I'm not. I'm not going to drive to Home Depot, buy stuff, take it home, pick up my mother, drive back to the Home Depot, and then wait for a hour or so. If she isn't sure she can drive, I will just wait some more.

She's sure. I go and eat my soup.

Before I finish my soup, she has changed her mind and calls back to ask if I can still drive her to the clinic. Since I haven't left yet, that's okay.

I go back to watching TV. I can't see getting anything useful done while I'm waiting for her to call. And I still haven't had a bath, cause I don't know for sure when she's going to need me. It will probably be still another hour, but it might not be.

She calls back and asks if I could come to her house and wait with her. Sure.

It is about 1 when I get to her house. The clinic calls not long after that. I drive my mom to the clinic. I know where I'm going, but she complains that I'm taking the wrong street. I'm driving. This is the street I'm driving on. This is the way I drive to Home Depot. The clinic is right next to the Home Depot. They have the same parking lot and everything.

Mother is still explaining how her way is faster when we get to the clinic. I am distracted a bit. Someone else doesn't stop at the four-way stop sign. He didn't hit us. Clearly his fault if he did, but I rather not be hit just the same. And I'd rather not have someone in the passenger seat talking about directions, especially to a place we're already at.

My mom gets out of the car, and I drive a bit closer to Home Depot before parking.

I decide against the scrap lumber and the clearance paint. I wonder if there had been more stuff available at 9.

I wander around the store looking at odd things I have no intention of buying anytime soon. I just need to kill some time while the doctor is talking to mom.

I think an hour passed. That's long enough I think. I head to the clinic.

Mom isn't anywhere I can see. I sit down. Someone puts in The Blind Side dvd. After a while mom calls my cell phone. She's waiting on an X-ray or something. I watch about half of the movie while I wait.

At about 3 my mom is done with her doctor visit. I think that it was a waste of time. She has a stack of papers of tests she should have in the future and such. I don't think that they did anything to make her feel better that day, except to tell her to take some over the counter meds that she already had at home. She does get sick like this a lot. Probably these suggested tests are things that have been done in the past. They probably aren't going to learn anything this time that they didn't already know from last time.

Whatever.

But now that's she's seen a doctor, and they did not rush her to the hospital to have some test that's supposed to be done on an empty stomach, and they told her it was okay to eat something if she felt like it, I thought we'd be either rushing to someplace for lunch or at least rushing to the grocery store. But she doesn't seem in a hurry to do either. There were coupons at the clinic for Chick-fil-A, cause there is one in the same shopping center, so she decides to go there.

After we order our food she remembers that she should take some tablet before eating, and she can't find any in her purse. They sell them at Target, also in the shopping center, and if she'd thought of it she could have bought some earlier. It isn't that far, and I volunteer to go get some.

So I walk to Target and buy her some pills. When I get back she's going on about how she didn't think that I meant to walk. But it isn't that far, and it's less trouble than moving the car again.

So she thanks me and pays for my lunch and I take her home. It is nearly 4 now. There's no point in doing anything before going to my brother's place. Except when I got home I did finally have a bath.

I said something like she couldn't have really been that sick if she felt like waiting two hours to do her hair. She disagreed. Or, she should have at least signed in online before she did her hair. Again, she disagreed.

She just doesn't seem to get it.

When I got home I found that I had dropped the missing glasses and they were on the side of the street. I had run over them. The case is ruined, but it seems like the glasses themselves might be fixed. I think that they just need some adjusting.

On the first day of Christmas

Okay, so over the years I have found things to do in the days leading up to Christmas, some of which are nearly as important to me as Christmas itself, or maybe even more so.

For a time my family started having more of a big Christmas Eve and doing gift exchanges then instead of Christmas morning or later that day. Then we switched back to having it Christmas day. And now we have switched it back to Christmas Eve, so that my sister and her husband are able to spend some time with his family. So our gift exchange is on Christmas Eve, and then we might still see each other at some point on Christmas, or we might try to spend Christmas with grandma, and whoever else might stop by to see grandma.

In the past five or six years, I have exchanged gifts with certain friends at a Star Trek club. This is in addition to the official club gift exchange. This gift exchange has become more fun for me than exchanging gifts with my family, cause as my family members got older, I have more and more trouble trying to figure out what to get for them. But the gifts for my friends need to be ready about a week before Christmas, which sometimes makes us feel a bit rushed. This year one of them will probably not get done in time, but that will be okay, he won't care. Maybe I can get it done in time for the New Year's Eve party.

And then there is this charity thing that I do most of the time, if I have the time and the money. Last year I had the time, but not the money, and I was going to skip it, but I got talked into it anyway. This year I didn't have the time or the money, and it was a week earlier than it is usually scheduled. I was very busy. I had planned something, but I backed out about a week ago.

So, the first day of Christmas was Saturday, and I skipped it. I was at home. I was busy trying to finish a blue scarf. I guess the second day of Christmas was Sunday.

Sunday there was a party at Uncle G's place. Some years someone in my extended family will try to have all of us over before it gets too close to Christmas, but I rarely get to go. The first year my mother was elected for this, and my mother is just not social and never does anything like have a party. And I missed it. We had had already planned a trip to New Orleans, and we did not think that we could reschedule it, so we went there instead of mom's party, and she was very mad at us. Our plans were made first, and she could have rescheduled hers if she wanted us there so much. And there have been other parties when I had a job and couldn't get the day off, or we were working out of town, or we just didn't hear about it in time, or one of us was sick or whatever. And it isn't something that happens every year anyway, just whenever someone is in the mood to do it.

So Uncle G and his wife were in the mood, and they had a party Sunday. And my mom originally wasn't planning to go, but I accepted as soon as I was given the invitation. My mom kept calling me to tell me not to be early, or some such thing. My mom was micro-managing me, and it wasn't her party, and originally she wasn't even planning to attend. Yesterday she called a fourth time to tell me that maybe I didn't have to be a half an hour late as she had originally told me, just to be a little bit late, and then she was telling me not to bring food in Tupperware and such. I don't have lots of dishes. I have to use what I have. No one else will care about it.

So we got there fifteen or twenty minutes late instead of half an hour late like my mom said, and we were the first ones there. But I had a little bit to do with the food that we brought. When I had finished with that my brother showed up, bringing cookies from mother, though I'm not quite sure why she sent them ahead since she showed up five minutes later herself. Whatever. Anyway, I think that about half of our extended family were in that little house for a bit. Mostly Uncle G's kids and grandkids, and also his wife's daughter and grandkids, but also my mom and family and another uncle and aunt.

One of my cousins I hadn't seen since I was a kid, and another one I hadn't seen except for at Thanksgiving. Other cousins I have seen on and off, and some of them my age or just a bit older have children, and I have seen them, and I have seem them get older, and one of them even had a baby. So one of my cousins (not one at this party) is a grandparent, though I haven't yet seen the grandchild. And I am well aware that I am old enough to have children, and that I am even perhaps old enough to be a grandparent, if I had wanted to have children and had them. But of the two cousins that I had not seen for a long time, they are not that much younger than me, and I had heard that they had children, but somehow I still picture them being children themselves, and I just didn't quite get it. So some of the children of these cousins are teenagers, some of them soon to be off to college, almost grown themselves.

So after we had plenty to eat and played a few games, Uncle G gave his grandkids presents, and then the adults had a gift exchange. This was one of those gift exchanges where people steal stuff. I was very glad to see that my scarves were stolen a few times. My husband got some games, and I have a gift certificate for a restaurant.

So that all went very well.

When I got home, my mom called me again to tell me I had done a good job.

Back to work. I hope the next Christmas thing is as good.

Trying to make plans

Well, my husband will be gone for a week, and I have stuff that I need to do, and I had better do it. So I should not waste time on the computer and such. I have knitting to do and cleaning to do, and there are deadlines. One Christmas get-together on the 13th, and another on the 19th, and probably stuff to do with my family on the 24th, and maybe someplace to be on the 22nd or the 23rd, and something else to do on the 12th if I have the time. I need to finish Miss Allergies scarf and get started on the pilot's gift and get something for G and finish up with the gifts for R and K. I need to put fringe on scarves that I have already made and probably try to squeeze in two more scarves before the 13th.

And most of that stuff needs to be done this week, because there are plans for next week. I am planning to go out of town Sunday, and I plan to be gone til that Wednesday, if not longer. And that won't leave a lot of time for knitting or cleaning or anything else if I have to get stuff done before the 13th, and other stuff done before the 19th.

And then I still don't know what gifts I will need before the 24th, so I will probably still have stuff to do even after the 19th.

Anyway, on Sunday I hope to be out of the house for a few days. As usual, most of the time will be spent in a motel room watching cable, but there are other plans. We will be going to a place that used to be special to us, but we have been there so many times that after a while going there is no big deal. We have done most of the stuff there is to do and seen what there is to see. If it costs money we probably don't bother with it anymore. I have a couple of friends there that I don't even visit, cause I just don't want to have to explain what has happened, and I really don't know how to have the catching up conversation without getting into it. So there is this place that used to be very special, and then was sort of special, and then was sort of old hat.

But it was still an excuse to get out of the house for a while.

And while I was debating on whether or not I should go this trip, my husband really started to get into the idea of making this a nice trip. While we have already been to all the places in the area that we would really care about, I don't think that we have been in the area much around Christmas, and there are several places that we have not been at night, and so that would really be nice to see.

Of course that is next week, and this week Grandma is coming home, though I don't know what day. I had planned to help out some, even if I don't take the "job", and now I am planing to go out of town on the 6th.

So I'm sure that my mother isn't going to be happy about that.

This is one of the reasons that I don't want the "job", though it certainly isn't the main reason. But if I had a regular job and I needed the day off or if I wanted to go away for a few days, there would be a way for me to do that. I might not aways get the day off that I wanted, and I might not be able to go out of town during a particular week or month, but there would be a way to get someone else to cover for me for short periods of time, and there would be someone else who could do the work on my day off, if there was even anything that needed to be done on my day off. My mother has so far not even been able to tell me what hours I would have this "job", or what would be my day off, or what would happen on a day that I get sick, or what would happen if there is ice on the road and I can't drive, or if someone else could take over for a few days if I just needed a break.

I am afraid that my mother is going to try to talk me out of going out of town Sunday. And then the "job" will probably not work out, and after a week or two they will have to make other arrangements, and I'll have missed out on the trip for nothing.

And of course if I am going to go on this trip I need to get the house cleaned before Sunday anyway. In addition to the knitting and the usual stuff that needs to be done.

I am tired just thinking about it. I would like to go back to bed now.

I'm going to have a nervous breakdown

Sunday when we were at the movie theater, I excused myself and went to the ladies room. While I was washing my hands I looked in the mirror.

Hell, is that what I look like? My hair was completely flat, and this looks even worse as it has been a while since my last haircut, and I haven't even had the money to get my bangs trimmed. (I suppose that I could ask my mother to do it, but we really don't want to go there.)

So a few hours later, I am lying around in bed, mostly watching the X-files. And I get up to get some water from the bathroom sink, and I look at myself in the mirror.

Now I look just gorgeous. My hair looks a bit wavy or something. Why do I look so good now when I looked so awful a few hours ago? Why can't I look good when someone will see me?

But enough of looking gorgeous. It is hot, and I have work to do. Better put my hair in a ponytail. I go outside and get the area of my future wildflower bed ready to dig. I don't get started with the actual digging, just sort of mark off the area and move everything out of the way so I can get an early start on it Monday morning. Then we watch Friday's episode of Eureka with my brother.

So that was Sunday. Things are tense, but we feel a little bit better after we watch a movie and I make plans for the rest of the week to work on the wildflower bed.

Monday morning I actually get up and start digging the wildflower bed. It is hard work, and I give up on it before noon. Working after that is out of the question. It is way too hot. But I get about half of the hole dug. Major progress on the project.

The thing that sucks about doing a lot of serious physical labor in the morning (okay, one of the things) is that you just sort of wait around the whole rest of the day for it to be time to go to bed. I'm too tired to really do anything, but if I actually give in and take a long nap that means I probably won't get any sleep at night.

We watch True Blood and Hung. The opening titles of Hung have the main character doing a Reginald Perrin into a lake, which is kind of funny seeing that the new Reginald Perrin does not do a Reginald Perrin into the ocean.

And what the hell kind of name is Sookie anyway?

So after we watch that stuff, it is back to the X-Files, and waiting for the day to be over so that I can go to bed.

The guy that my husband works with who is involved with the new business thing calls. The two of them are talking a lot, cause the business thing is supposed to get started for real on Saturday. Anyway, the guy says some odd things.

Like he wants the credit card payments to be made out to the business, but he wants the checks written to him personally. He says that it is time that they started running the business like it was a real business.

So that doesn't make any sense. Why should the checks be written out to him, and how would that make things more like a real business? Writing checks to him is the exact opposite of running things like a real business. And the reason that we got the business account in the first place was so that the checks could be written to the business instead of just written to my husband, cause we thought that would look bad.

But even then, the checks could be written to my husband, since his name is on the business. The other guy's name isn't on the business or on the business account. There's no way the checks are going to be written out to him, and he's just not making any sense.

Okay, so that was Monday.

Tuesday morning I got up and dug more of the hole. I got most of that done. I had a bath.

The guy who works with my husband called again. He wants to have his name on the business and on the business account and all of that. And if my husband doesn't agree then he won't work on Saturday.

This is nuts.

These guys are always talking about going into business for themselves and how it isn't fair that when the company has sales of three thousand dollars or so, three of them get about three hundred dollars each while the company gets the rest of the money. Not that the rest of the money is pure profit, there are expenses to take out and a lot of other people at the company still need to get paid, but sometimes it just doesn't seem like a fair split. If only they could start their own companies, they could make more money.

So for three years this guy has said that if my husband ever starts his own company, he would like to work with my husband. And for the last eight months, they have seriously talked about starting a business together, only the guy usually says that he doesn't want to start a business himself, he just wants to work with my husband if my husband starts one.

So that is what was done. My husband started a business, as sole proprietor, and this other guy was going to work with him. My husband bought the computer, bought office supplies, created a website, paid for an advertisement, etc.... The business and the business account only has my husband's name on it (though I believe I have access to the account in an emergency). So all the money put into the business has been my husband's money, and most of the work done has been done by my husband.

Until recently, when we just totally ran out of money.

There were a few more things needed (or at least wanted) to get the business started. Like they needed some samples (or some more samples, I'm not sure which). And I don't know whose idea it was to buy the samples, just that we didn't have any money left, so either this guy would have to buy them himself or we would just have to do without them. So the other guy bought the samples.

And the business is going to start Saturday, and we need to do a few more things, like we need to rent some equipment. Only, we have no money, so it was either call to cancel their first account, or this guy would have to rent the equipment with his credit card. The guy agreed to use his card. He was supposed to meet us on Friday so that we could pick up the rental equipment.

Hopefully on Saturday they would make a lot of money, and then make a bit more the next Saturday. Then they would take out the money for the rental equipment and some other expenses (not even the expenses we're already out, just money we will actually spend for the two days that they work together), they would split the remaining money. The expense money would be at least six hundred dollars (more if business was good), and they were hoping to take in two or three thousand dollars Saturday, and a bit more the next Saturday.

As exciting as that sounds, that wouldn't even get us caught up on the bills, but it might at least get us caught up on the car and such.

Anyway, they were either going to lose some money if business was really bad on Saturday, or if it was good, they would split a thousand dollars or more. Since this guy usually sells something around two thousand a day (and on a regular basis he brings in three thousand or more), they were hoping for something in the four to six thousand dollar range for working the two Saturdays, taking out a thousand or so for expenses, and then splitting the remaining money. I'm not sure that they had discussed whether or not they would equally split the six hundred that they would lose if they made no money at all, or if my husband would be totally responsible for that. Maybe the guy was worried that he would get stuck with the total rental bill of four hundred dollars. I don't know.

But anyway, out of nowhere he wants to be a legal partner and he wants his name on everything, and if we don't do it he won't work on Saturday.

Well, I don't even think that anything can be done with less than a week to go anyway. And if we wanted to do that, he isn't here to sign anything. I suppose that we could make some arrangement to give him access to the business account, but I don't trust him after this stunt. So I said, don't do it. Either cancel the whole thing or maybe I'll try to do his job Saturday, but don't put his name on anything. Something is up. This just doesn't make any sense.

I asked how many customers were expected. My husband said about thirty-five. Thirty-five each Saturday? He said no. So, I thought, if not thirty-five each, thirty-five total. Which probably means twenty customers or so on Saturday. I convinced myself I could do that, even though I haven't done this in about seven years and don't really want to do it ever again. But, it would be better than putting this guy's name on the business account and making him a full partner, when he didn't want to be a full partner until two days ago.

At this point, we started to worry about him working with us at all, even if he apologized and said that he did want to work Saturday. I mean, he would be there with the customers, and he could just say, make the checks out to me, and then he could just go cash the checks and leave us to pay the bills without any money. So if he did want to work on Saturday, I would have to babysit him and deal with all the money myself, cause we just don't trust the man anymore.

Oh, and this is the guy who is out of town with our computer.

But at this point he says that he will meet with us Friday morning to give everything back.

I am wondering if there will be a fight over these samples. I will have to have some to work with, but we still don't have any money and can't pay for them Friday. If he says he's going to keep them until we pay, we can't pay now, and the samples will be of no use to us later, so we shouldn't pay for them later if we can't have them on Friday.

I'm picturing us in front of Judge Judy.

Anyway, I agreed to work Saturday, thinking that I would have twenty customers or so. But again, my husband wasn't clear about that. There are thirty-five customers on Saturday, but he doesn't know how many there will be on the next Saturday because names are still being added to the list.

Crap.

Okay, when this used to be my full-time job seven years ago, and I used to know what I was doing, I could handle about twenty to twenty-five people, and on a good day I could take in about a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars would not be so great on Saturday, cause that would only leave us about four hundred dollars profit (plus whatever we could make on the second Saturday), but compared to what we expected the other guy to bring in, that's just not very good. But I used to do that level of business, and I used to be happy with it.

On my very busiest day, when I was used to doing this, I had thirty-nine customers and brought in more than two thousand dollars. But it was very hard to do that, and I didn't have time to eat lunch or anything. That sort of thing makes a person panic, even when that just means that they'll make twice as much money.

I don't think that I can handle thirty-five people in one day, after not having done this stuff for seven years.

And I don't look good.

And what am I going to wear?

I could just be sick.

But, I agreed to do it, and my husband told the other guy that we didn't need him.

That left us short one credit card.

Well, we do have one credit card that we've kept up with, but right now it is totally maxed out, so we can't buy anything with it. So I doubt we can use it at the rental place either.

So we're back to borrowing from my mom or his brother again, after we haven't paid back either of them from last time.

So my husband goes to work, and he's like, you'll talk to your mom about the money, right?

So, I call my mom. I don't really feel up to talking to her at all, and here I am calling to ask for money.

It doesn't go well. At first she sounds pleasant enough and is interested in the whole story, even though I am up front with her that the point of it all is that we need to borrow money and if she doesn't want to we can skip the whole rest of the story. Just say no, and I can go back to gardening or something, and he can try to borrow the money from his brother.

But my mother gets on to other subjects, like why don't I like being a salesperson? Like she wants to talk me into being a salesperson. It doesn't make any sense. It just makes me feel like I'm a bad person. Just let it go. It doesn't have anything to do with anything. I don't want to go back to this full time, but I'm so desperate to not have this guy involved with us anymore that I've agree to do something I really hate for two days. That's all that she needed to know. We did not need to have an argument about it.

So, she can't decide without talking to my brother first. And then my brother can't decide without knowing just everything about the business. I can't really see how that helps. Just say yes, you're in trouble and I'll help you out, or no, I can't loan you any money cause you haven't paid me back for last time. The details of the business don't really matter that much.

My husband comes home and he talks to my brother. They seem to have a much more pleasant conversation than my mother and I did, even though my brother seems to start out saying this is a very bad idea and we should just cancel.

They finish talking, and we try to go to bed and get some sleep. Only neither one of us feels good. I keep waking up. I almost get to sleep, and then I feel sick and have to get up again.

As long as I am awake anyway, I should go outside and look for meteors.

Dallas is on one side of us, and Fort Worth is down the way on the other side. And at the time I go outside, the almost full moon is directly overhead.

No meteors for me. I go back inside and try to sleep.

So that was Tuesday.

Wednesday I don't get up early as I have been. After feeling sick and waking up several times during the night, I finally get back to sleep and don't wake up until about eight. I'm trying to drink more water, but this time I go straight for the cola. I get very little gardening done, but that is all that it takes to make me hot and tired. I have more soda and a bath and then watch an episode of the X-files.

My husband calls the place with the rental equipment and finds out that while you need a credit card number to leave with them when you take the equipment, you don't actually have to pay with the credit card. That's just supposed to insure that you bring the equipment back in good shape. (I'm not sure how that is, since even if the card had any credit on it, that wouldn't be enough to replace the equipment, but whatever.) And then you don't actually pay for the rental fees until you return the equipment, cause you might bring it back late and have to pay for an extra day or something.

So it doesn't appear that we have to borrow a credit card or money or anything, as long as we make some money we can just pay the rental fees on Monday. The long conversations with my mother and brother were unnecessary.

At about eleven I feel up to having a look at the computer program I am supposed to use on Saturday.

It has been too long. My husband tries to show me a few things, but he goes too fast for me to follow the simplest things. What have I gotten myself into?

It goes a little better once I am sitting at the computer instead of looking over his shoulder. I can work some of it. We go to lunch at Arby's, and then come home and see if I remember how to do anything.

Okay, I think that the part we practiced isn't that difficult, but I'm just going to be slow no matter what. I have to stop and think about things that I used to have memorized. It isn't fun.

And then there are parts that I just can't practice with on this computer. I need the laptop, but the other guy has it.

And I haven't had customers in seven years. I can't practice that part either. I don't know what to say to people.

I might not know what to say to these people anyway. Several of them don't speak English. There will be translators hanging around, but that will slow things down even more. But I used to have this whole speech I was supposed to say, and I thought that it was rather long, so I cut it down to what I thought was important and then slipped in this little bit about the sales making the program possible (and then I tried to just be nice about it after that and not bully people into buying stuff). I don't have a speech this time, and I don't know how to politely suggest that they need to buy something or we won't be back to do this sort of thing again. Just the most basic information that used to roll off of my tongue will now be very awkward.

My husband went to work. I have been alternating playing with the computer program in between watching X-Files and looking at other stuff on the Internet. I get the basic idea of the thing now, but there's just some stuff that I don't know how to do and I'm not going to get to be any good at by Saturday. So, I don't know what to do at the beginning of the day to get started. And then once I get started, I don't know what to say to the customers. And I don't know how to finish up with a customer, and if he's paying with a credit card I don't know how to do that, cause we have to do something with the phone cause we don't have a card swipe thing on the computer. And then when I finish with the customer, I don't know what to do to move on to the next customer. And then if I don't fall apart and run home, I don't know what to do at the end of the day to wrap everything up.

And I'm hoping that part doesn't take too long. I was supposed to see my friends Saturday afternoon, which now I'm not, but maybe some of them will wait around for me if I can meet them by six or so.

Anyway, I don't know what else to do. I try to figure out how to do something, and then I go watch some TV, and then I come back and see if I can remember what I was doing. And I know that I'm not doing much, and I should be doing more work and less watching TV, but I'm not sure what else to do without the laptop and/or a practice customer.

F^&*ing thirty-five customers in seven hours. If we get started on time and finish when we are supposed to. And no lunch break. That's like twelve minutes per customer. (Less than that if I'm ever going to go to the ladies room or get a soda or something.)

I'm not in a happy place.

Going to have another soda and watch more TV now.

Some time to myself

I have three days to myself. It has been a long time. I can't remember how long it's been since I've had a few days to myself. In fact, it has been a while since my husband had any work at all, so I'm not even sure when I last had even an afternoon to myself.

So I am debating should I do anything that I wouldn't normally do if he were here.

Of course, I have no money, so I really shouldn't do anything. I should stay here and clean house.

Now, there are parts of the house that are easier to clean when he is away, so maybe I should do that. But on the other hand, I already started something before he left, and I should finish up with that before moving on to something else.

To tell the truth, the timing is bad, and I probably won't do either. I will probably spend tomorrow or the next day mostly in bed. I hope not, but it is a possibility.

And, with the computer all to myself, I'm going to watch all of the nineties version of Dark Shadows on Hulu. Assuming that I don't spend most of tomorrow and the next day in bed. And assuming that my mother doesn't call and ruin my whole weekend.

Watching TV

It is starting to bother me that I am not getting anything useful done. Working in the garden is out of the question. Some days I just do not feel well enough to do anything, but the days I feel good I still don't do much.

Yesterday, the bashed finger felt much better. It is hardly noticeable now, and tomorrow I expect it to feel completely normal again. Yesterday was hot and we didn't go anywhere or do anything, except for us watching TV and him doing stuff on the computer. It is very annoying to know that a whole day (or several days) has gone by and nothing has gotten done (unless you are on vacation or something and had planned on getting nothing done). I washed out enough dishes to do breakfast and lunch, made breakfast (cold cereal), made lunch (pasta, with what little veggies I was able to get out of the garden), and watered the plants. That was it. The rest of the day I watched TV. My husband had a similar day, he made pizza for dinner and washed off a screen from one of the air conditioners, and the rest of the day was spent on the computer or watching TV.

It's a rare day that we don't even run errands or visit the library and literally just lie around and watch TV, but I think we have had a few and are going to have more. So I am having a bit of a rant about the TV, mostly about the annoying digital switchover.

So it has been a couple of weeks since the digital switchover nonsense, and I am mostlygetting used to it, but I'm still having some problems with it.

Even before the switchover, there were some problems. Like the VCR doesn't rewind properly. If you hit the play and rewind buttons and the same time, that's fine, but it will take a really long time to rewind the whole tape. If you just want to rewind the tape, and you just hit rewind and not play, it tends to the think about it for a moment, and then the power on the VCR goes off. And then when you turn the power back on the VCR ejects the tape.

I noticed that would happen once in a while, but over the the last few months it went from happening once in a while to happening all the damn time.

The VCR is one of those tape and DVD combo things, so if I get rid of it I won't be able to watch DVDs either. It was a Christmas gift from two or three years ago. I don't think I should need another one so soon.

But it still seemed to play and record and all of that just fine. So just the rewind didn't work, and it seems to me that they used to sell something that would rewind tapes. That never quite made sense to me why anyone would need such a thing, unless maybe someone owned a video store. So I never bought one of these gadgets, but I knew that they used to make them. So I thought if I could find one that would solve my problem.

So I didn't find one, but there are just stacks and stacks of old VCRs at Goodwill and such, so we bought one of those for less than ten dollars. We didn't attach it to a TV, we just plugged it in, and now we use that to rewind the tapes.

Right about the time that we figured out to do that, the fast forward feature doesn't work either.

So we can either fast forward and play, which takes a long time, or we can put the tape in the other machine. But while there is often a need to rewind a whole tape, there isn't much need to fast forward a whole tape. And it is hard to tell how much a tape has fast forwarded on a machine that isn't hooked up to the TV, so we usually have to go with the slower play and fast forward feature.

Anyway, I think all new stuff is now deliberately designed to be crap.

Okay, so we'd about dealt with that when the digital switch happened. Which meant that we had to go and get a second box to use the VCR, and then after we got it hooked up we found out that you couldn't program the thing to record on different channels. You just have to always leave the VCR on channel four, and then it will record whatever the box is set for. And there's no programing the box to switch to a different channel.

So that all sucks, but we haven't really needed to do that yet. So it won't really suck until we go on a trip, or until the fall when we get lots of new TV to watch and record. Right now there just isn't enough new TV for it to be a problem yet.

And of course with my husband out of work, we usually don't need to record anything anyway.

But Sunday there was both Impact and Merlin. So we watched Merlin and recorded Impact.

We then noticed something odd that we hadn't noticed before. When we are watching just the TV and using just the box hooked up to the TV instead of the box hooked up to the VCR, channel 21 was on channel 8, and channel 27 was on 11. But channel 11 was not on channel 27, and channel 8 was not on channel 21. Channel 21 and channel 27 both had the "no signal" message.

That wasn't how it was a couple of weeks ago before we got the second box for the VCR. So I don't know what happened. Maybe you have to reset the things after every storm or every time the power goes out or something. Anyway, we don't know what the deal is.

But the box on the VCR seemed to work fine, and we recorded Impact okay, which we were able to watch after we rewound the tape in the other machine.

Most of this week I have been watching Ark II, Space Academy, and Jason of Star Command on DVD. In theory, I am doing this to make sure that the DVDs all work before sending them on to my friend in the great white north. But really, I just haven't seen this stuff in a very long time.

I think that Ark II is the best of them, but I loved everyone in Space Academy. I think by the time they made Jason of Star Command I wouldn't have watched it, except that James Doohan was on some of them.

I didn't like a lot of stuff that they did in TV shows made for kids. I didn't like silly stuff. I didn't like that sometimes characters did stuff just to be funny, when it didn't really make much sense for the character to do that.

Now that I am older, I guess I still don't like that sort of thing that much. But at least I am aware of the tradition of the comic relief character. I have a little more respect for the actors having to do this sort of thing. Or, at least, maybe I have a little more sympathy for them and don't call them names.

During the eighties there was this series called Evening Shade. I did not watch the show, but it seems like it was on. Maybe my parents watched it. Anyway, sometimes it was on, and I wasn't paying much attention to it.

My mom made a point of watching it one day. She said that one of the minor characters looked like someone she went to school with. The boy's name was Charlie. The actor's name was Charles, but he had a different last name. But after a while she was pretty sure that it was the same guy.

I looked on the Internet. The actor was born in Texas, though not in Dallas county. But he did grow up in Texas with a different last name. So this probably was the guy that my mom knew in school.

And this same actor was a character that I did not like in Jason of Star Command. He was supposed to be smart, but he was always doing something dumb or getting his hair caught in something.

So I wonder why my mom told us that she went to school with this guy from Evening Shade, but she didn't tell us that she went to school with the goofball from Jason of Star Command. Does having wild hair and funny eyebrows keep your fellow classmates from recognizing you, even though they recognize an even older version of you later?

My last complaint about the TV is what happened yesterday after a couple of celebrities died. I am sorry that these people died, but this sort of thing happens. People die. But you don't need to hear about it for hours and hours on four networks. These people were not past Presidents of the United States, they were just entertainers. We did not need to see old stuff about them for three hours on prime time television.

I suppose it wouldn't have mattered much, seeing as most of the shows were reruns. But they also managed to show old interviews of Farrah Fawcett in place of the one new show of the evening, Listener. (Okay, Listener isn't really a new show, it's just a Canadian show, but it is new to me, and I wanted to watch it.) So that made me mad. Not as mad as I get when football games prevent Cold Case from being shown on it's regular scheduled time, but very similar to that.

One last thing is that there is going to be something new on FOX tonight called Virtuality. Even when there is something new on TV that I might want to watch, I'm likely to miss it, because I wasn't watching enough TV (other than tapes and DVDs) to see a commercial for it. Anyway, tonight there will be this movie that I haven't seen, and it's probably going to be some really awful thing that was made for the Sci Fi channel, but I'm probably going to watch it anyway.

It's Friday now, right?

My husband has had the last week and a half off, without pay, and we didn't have anything to speak of in savings either. So when you have a week and a half off, and you should be off on a trip or something, we have been at home most of the time, except for maybe seeing a couple of movies.

So we have spent some time together. And then there's been time just sort of being in each other's way, or at least, trying to stay out of each other's way.

Until Tuesday, I had a certain garden project to keep me busy. But it is June in Texas, and it is hot, though it is not as hot as it is going to get. So I go outside in the morning, and my first thought is actually something like it is too cool for my liking, and that I should go back inside. But a bit of actual work cures me of thinking that it isn't warm enough. And of course the rest of the day is plenty warm.

But I can't do very much work all at once, even in the morning when it is somewhat cool. I go outside and dig or something for maybe half an hour, and then I go back inside and watch TV for between ten minutes or an hour. Only there isn't anything to watch on TV. There isn't even anything that I taped on TV the night before. So instead of watching TV on the TV, I'm watching something on Hulu or YouTube or something like that on the computer.

Anyway, about half of the time this works out just fine. My husband bought a new laptop, and he has been in the other room doing photoshop stuff and other such stuff, and sometimes playing a computer game, and he's half watching some new music video channel that we now have because of the digital TV thing. So that is mostly okay. Except the laptop isn't hooked up to the Internet, and sometimes he needs the Internet. And sometimes when I am halfway through watching something I go outside and dig in the dirt, and then I come back in the house to find him on this computer, and I have to wait for him to do whatever it is that he's doing before I can go back to doing what I was doing. And there is nothing for me to do except wait. If there was something else for me to do, I wouldn't be using the computer in the first place.

Sometimes he is actually doing something that needs to be done, like checking the company website to make sure his schedule didn't change. Or sometimes he is downloading something. But usually he is either blogging (which he could mostly do on a different computer and then copy what he wrote on a disk) and sometimes he is doing other stuff like Twitter. Now, he knows how much this sort of thing annoys me, and we have had discussions about it, and as soon as we will have a discussion about it he do it even more and find yet another website to annoy me with, so I have stopped speaking to him on the subject. He knows how I feel about it, he knows he isn't supposed to do it, and he does it anyway.

Anyway, I especially do not see the point of Twitter. Besides the fact that I don't like him talking to a zillion people that I don't know, Twitter itself is pointless. It makes no damned sense. It isn't organized the way that a blog is or the way that other websites are. Twitter is just this endless stream of comments, and you can't tell what the comment is in relation to. It's just a bunch of random comment that aren't filed under anything except for who wrote it and whom it was written to.

Anyway, it was Tuesday, and I was digging a hole in the ground. And Tuesday I was quite serious about digging the hole in the ground, but it was hot. And so I would work on it until just before lunch and then have a bath. And then after lunch it would be hotter than it was in the morning, and after having a bath and getting clean clothes on, I'm not so much in a hurry to go out and get dirty again. So we maybe do something else for a few hours. Like we have been watching the Prisoner. So we maybe run a few errands and then come back and watch a few episodes of the Prisoner. And then maybe I go back to working in the garden and watching stuff on Hulu, and he goes back to his computer game.

So that is how it was for most of a week or so, maybe getting a lot done one day and not so much the next. So Tuesday I did a lot of work, enough that I was starting to see some progress. And Wednesday I got up and planned to do a lot work that day too. And in the morning I did do a lot of work. And after doing some work, my husband comes out and says that we should go for a walk, and I agreed.

But I'm afraid that going for a walk right after I had worked for a bit tired me out, and so I had a bath a couple of hours before lunch, and I didn't really get back to it. It was so nice to be clean, and I wanted to stay clean for a bit. I found other things to do, like washing dishes.

Now I really wish that I had done more work on Wednesday. I also wish that I had gone to Walmart afterwards and got some felt and other craft supplies to make a witch hat. But I did neither of those things Wednesday.

Now, there was a thirty percent chance of rain Wednesday, but it just looked cloudy and didn't really do anything for a long time. But then we started hearing stuff on the news, and I figured that I should at least go outside and smooth out the dirt that I had started to put back in this hole. If the dirt was going to get wet, it should at least get wet level and not be a lumpy mess. So I started to go outside and do that, only it was really windy. So that took some doing. My husband came out to help me for a bit, and then we went back inside. And there was a lot of nonsense, like the power blinking on and off for a bit and us having to reset the clocks a few times. And then it was over, and while everything got a bit wet and it was very windy, there wasn't a lot of actual rain. People north of us had tornadoes and such, but not us. We went to bed.

Apparently the rain was not over. I briefly woke up in the middle of the night (not sure what time) and heard that it was raining. Well, good. If everything has to get wet, it might as well get enough rain to do somebody some good and not just ruin my plans for gardening in the morning. I went back to sleep. In the morning it was still raining.

Well it stopped raining enough for me to go out and look, there was standing water in places, and of course the hole I had dug was completely filled with water. I hadn't staked the tomatoes, so they had all fallen over, as had a lot of my other plants. That's okay. Usually they dry out and recover.

And then it rained some more. And it was on the news most of the day. There were traffic problems. There was even flooding in places, though not for me personally, as the power was on most of the time, except for a minute here and there so that I would have to reset clocks and such. But the power never stayed off, so the pump kept the water out of my house.

So, obviously there was no going out to work in the garden yesterday. So I could have been working on my hat, except that I didn't go to Walmart or anyplace to get supplies. And I didn't think that I should go out any yesterday to get them, because of the traffic problems here and there, and I didn't really need anything. There was food in the house and all of that. The news said to stay in if you didn't have to be out, so we did just that. We stayed here and watched the rest of the Prisoner.

So I have been outside to have a look this morning, and while most of the water has gone down, there is still water in the hole I where I was working in the garden. And of course the ground is going to be too wet to work with for days anyway.

Today is Friday (at least, I think that it is Friday). I think that my husband is going back to work today (and of course he would be going back to work on a day that I can't garden and I don't really appreciate having the house to myself this afternoon).

And today is the day that the TV is supposed to go all digital and be annoying forever afterwards. We have been pretending that we don't have regular TV all week, trying to get used to the annoying bit of having four remotes instead of two. And yes, I know there is this thing called the universal remote, but the thing didn't work very well before so I doubt that it would be any better now. But sometimes you find yourself looking at a blank screen, and you don't know which remote you need to fix the problem. So sometimes you just give up and go back to regular TV. Only, after today, there won't be any regular TV to go back to.

Of course, it will really get ugly in September, when there are new TV shows to watch and record, and I will only be able to program record for one channel, or else I will have to go and manually change the channel. I really don't like to do that. If I do that I usually accidentally see the end of a program that I recorded, or I wait too long and then don't record the beginning of the next show, etc.... It is all very annoying.

Oh, and I'll be seeing my mother tomorrow, but that will be in a group and maybe it will be okay.

Digital TV and other crap

Yesterday I got up early and decided to make a serious effort to get out and finish my garden project of the twelve by four garden bed that will mostly have decorative sweet potatoes growing in it. I really need to finish that up, because I've already started another project of moving some flower bulbs. So I have a big mess to deal with, and I need to finish with something.

And of course on the one day that I get up early and decide to deal with some stuff, it started raining about an hour and a half later. So it will just have that last little bit of it not done for however long it takes for the soil to dry again, and the new project will just be half-done for a long time after that.

Sometime after it stopped raining I went and voted in our little community elections. I meant to do that the day before, but I forgot what time the clubhouse was open for voting. And I really don't know these people, so I vote based on who sends me the most interesting flyer. So there were nine people wanting to be elected, but only four wanted to be elected enough to send me a flyer. So that narrows it down a lot. Two of them were easy. Only two of the four were running against each other, so that was a tough one. In the end, I just guessed. On the way out someone thanked me for walking all that way to vote. It wasn't anyone I recognized, so it was probably someone I voted against. Tomorrow I should walk over and find out who won.

My mother and I are somewhat at it again. I have asked her again and again not to bring up certain subjects, that I will just have to stop talking to her if she continues to keep talking about certain subjects, etc.... And she still doesn't get it. Right after I tell her that something is off limits, she talks about it more, saying that she doesn't want to talk about anything personal. I didn't say that I didn't want to discuss personal aspects of a subject, I said that I did not want to discuss the subject at all. I remind her of that, and she keeps talking.

Also, she has said that she doesn't want me to be mad at her, so she's thinking that she should do something that goes against her better judgement if it will make me not be mad at her anymore. It won't. It will make me be less mad at her if she tries to undo what she did wrong, but it won't erase what she did in the first place. If you do something to make someone mad, you just have to live with it. If you said that you were going to do something, and you don't do it, even if you think you have a good reason, people get mad at you. You have to live with people being mad at you if you don't do what you say you will. Will people be less mad at you if you end up doing what you said you were going to do like a year later, probably. Will that totally fix things, probably not.

My husband continues to work on his business idea, and towards that end we have bought a new computer. We would have bought two new computers, but right when things were starting to be okay, his real job isn't going so good. In the last three weeks he has only worked five days. And he can't use the time off as he would like because a.) we have less money than he needs, and b.) the other person in this business venture had to go out of town for three weeks.

The TV switch over is in a couple of weeks, and I am really starting to hate it. First of all, this upgrade is a lot of nonsense. People who want to pay for a better TV picture already did that. I have never understood why it was necessary to force this on the rest of us. The TV worked just fine before, and for the past year or so it was just fine to have the TV work both ways. But in a couple of weeks I am going to have all kinds of problems when the regular signal is gone for good.

First off, I sent for those coupons that were supposed to get us free converter boxes. I never did see anyone selling the things for forty bucks, so they still ended up costing ten or twenty dollars, even with the coupons. So we got one last year, and it worked okay, and then we kind of forgot about the whole thing. Later, we realized that the VCR wasn't going to work without a second box, but the coupons expired before I realized this.

So then we thought about buying a new VCR.

Apparently, there just aren't any VCRs that work with the new signal. All the VCRs need converter boxes. That sucks. I mean, all the TVs made after a certain date have to work with the new signal, and we bought our TV about a year too early for that. But why didn't they do the same with the VCRs?

Anyway, after looking on the Internet, we see that there is a way to use the one box for both the TV and the VCR, if you go and buy some more cables and such. So we were going to do that, except on the day that we were going to go and buy the cables, we notice that method does not allow you to watch one program on the TV while recording something else on the VCR. You can only use the VCR to record what you are already watching on the TV.

So that sucks.

Okay, so I look around on the Internet, and they will send you a replacement coupon if you didn't realize that you needed two boxes and you let one of them expire. I'm not sure how they would know such a thing, but I filled out the forms to get another coupon. Unlike the first coupons, the new one came in about a week. So off we went to Walmart to spend ten dollars on another box, and then we also had to spend another twenty-five or so on additional cables and such.

Later we saw that some of the cables were at the dollar store.

Anyway, both boxes are now hooked up and there are cables and splitters and whatnot and we now have to have four remotes to watch TV instead of the two we were using last week.

And we've found out that the VCR still isn't going to work properly.

Well, most evenings when he is at work, I am using the VCR. Usually I watch what I want to watch on one channel, and then I record something that he wants to watch (or hopefully something that we both want to watch) on other channels. Or I record something that we both want to watch on various channels while I am out doing something else. And there is usually something on one channel at seven, and something on another channel at eight, and maybe something else on a third channel at nine.

Well, you can't do that anymore. The VCR is only going to work on one channel, until such time as you change the channel. You can't just program the thing to record on one channel at seven and another channel at eight and so on. The VCR has to be set for the same channel for the entire time you want to record things. So if you go out of town for a bit and try to record stuff while you're away, you can record eight hours of tape on the one channel, or maybe ten hours of disk on the one channel, but not on different channels.

With these damned boxes, you'd have to buy a different box and VCR for each channel if you want to program the VCR the way that you used to.

In addition to that, one of the boxes really sucks on FOX. I guess I'm glad that it sucks on FOX instead of some other channel, as I can watch most FOX stuff I like on Hulu.

I guess it was all meant to force us into getting cable and Tivo. That's what I thought in the beginning, before they said they were going to send everyone these coupons. Even with the coupons, we have spent about fifty dollars. And it still isn't going to work right.

Going back to bed now

Okay, so as some of you may know, I'm not getting along that well with my mother these days, and I spoke to her yesterday. Not that we said anything particular bad yesterday. In fact, this is probably the nicest conversation that I've had with my mother in more than a year. Not much of a conversation, but no yelling and no actual crying.

Maybe this is progress.

Anyway, usually talking to my mother leads to talking about things that I've already said that I don't want to discuss. And this leads to the yelling and the crying. And then later, I get sick. Literally, I get sick. I don't feel well. I stay in bed. Maybe I take over the counter medications meant for people who eat too stuff that they aren't supposed to. Maybe after all of that I end up getting sick anyway.

Okay, so last night, I got sick again. I haven't been sick in a very long time, and I haven't talked to my mother that much. Coincidence?

Might also have something to do with the fact that we've eaten out a lot recently. I don't want to eat out so much, but I went out with my friends this weekend, and then I've gone out a lot with my husband, who always wants to eat out. I usually only like to eat out once or twice a week.

So, I talked to my mom yesterday and didn't get much useful done yesterday, and then last night I didn't feel well. And I kept waking up, even though I took some pills to go to sleep.

Now I don't feel that sick, but after not getting much sleep, I think that I'd rather just stay in bed. I had all these things that I wanted to get done today, but I don't think that much of that is going to happen. Best to just give up and go back to bed and wait for the day to be over.

Maybe I can do all that other stuff tomorrow.

What kind of chair is this?

So I was looking at the little bit of my garden that seems to be doing okay, except that two of my herbs have died. And that's weird cause one of them lived outside with another plant in a pot all winter, but then I put it into the ground and give it more space, and it dies. The other one didn't look so good when I bought it, so that wasn't much of a surprise when it died.

So I was thinking that I should go and buy another plant to replace the dead one, but I never remember to get it when I'll already out doing stuff. Today I had planned to work on a costume (after I watched Fringe), but then my mom called. Now, this is the most pleasant conversation I have had with my mother in a very long time, but I guess that I still just don't want to talk to her that much. She said that she didn't want me to be mad at her about something, and that we can talk about plans, but I'm just not ready to do that after what she said the last time. So we didn't talk about it, and we spent a couple of hours talking, mostly about nothing.

Okay, I mostly listened to her talk about nothing.

So then it is like five o'clock, and I don't think I'm going to get any work done on that costume, so I might as well go and get that plant. I just needed to get something done, and that was the shortest thing on my list.

So I am at a nearby plant place that is small and independent. They don't have the best selection, and they don't have the best prices, but I will say that they are nice and mark each individual plant instead of just saying that this tray is this plant, and then you end up with a totally different plant because somebody moved them around.

So I am at the plant place, just to get this one herb plant, and I guess it doesn't matter that I can get less expensive plants somewhere else if I'm only going to buy one then it doesn't make that much difference. But I look around some, just in case there is something else that I need, and I find a pepper plant that I do not have. So that's two plants. So that's two plants that together cost me almost four dollars, but that's okay, cause it isn't worth the trouble of driving somewhere else to save a dollar or so.

And then when I am looking around at the other plants, I see this wooden chair, and it is a little wooden chair more the size for a child than for an adult. And there is a hole cut into the seat of the chair, and there's a planter stuck in the chair.

Well, maybe that looks really cute when there's actually a plant growing in it, but my first thought was that it looked a whole lot like a potty chair.

I would not like a wooden potty chair. I might get splinters.

Anyway, so I paid for my two plants, and on the way out I saw a little table that also had a hole and a planter stuck in it. So maybe a couple of chairs with planters around a table with a planter might not look so bad, especially once the plants are actually growing in them. But just one chair off by itself just makes me think....

That just looks like a potty chair.

A Saturday by myself

It finally does not smell of smoke outside. Or maybe I am just noticing it less. Outside I smell plants and dirt.

I have spent most of my time fixing up last year's hastily dug garden bed. I am using my new screen to sift out the rocks and weeds and large lumps of clay. Unfortunately, I have sifted out a a lot of earthworms. I have put them back, but I'm afraid that after such rough treatment that they might die anyway. I suppose that a few dead bugs are good for the soil too, but not as good as live earthworms. Anyway, it is a lot of work, and not the most pleasant work either. I quickly tire of it and go inside to rest for about an hour. So while I worked on it most of yesterday, I am still not finished. I feel awful, but I don't have that much left to do and I'm pretty sure that I can finish up today. It is going to rain Sunday, and it is best if I can get it all done before then.

I received another odd email. Same person, but with an altered name. I did not answer it. At this point I am pretty convinced that a.) it is just someone trying to sell me something, and b.) even if it wasn't someone trying to sell me something I probably wouldn't be interested anyway.

I was looking at the first season DVD of Star Trek Voyager, and as usual I had skipped over the special features part. But this time I went back and had a look at it. There were some scenes filmed with the first actress selected to play the captain. It had been so long I'd almost forgotten about that. I had thought she would have made a good captain, but in these scenes she looked a bit stiff.

My mother called again, and I told her that I was very busy with the garden (which is true) and would not be able to have dinner with her yesterday, and probably not lunch or dinner with her today either.

My husband will come home tonight, and after having tomorrow and the next day off will have to work for the next two weeks straight, maybe more. It is unusual that they are scheduled to work on Sundays, but for some reason this account has had them work a lot of Sundays, and they are probably only getting off tomorrow because it is Easter. Anyway, as much as we need the money, and this particular account has had more good days than bad, I still don't think that he's going to be very happy when he sees the two week schedule.

Yesterday we got a note on the door reminding us to conserve electricity and water, or they will have to raise the rent. I pay no attention to such things. I know that they send these things so that we'll remember to turn the lights out, but I didn't forget to turn them off, I did it on purpose. I don't like the total darkness when I'm by myself. And I also leave the hall light on when I'm away because there isn't another light switch at the other end of the hallway. Odd that. All these little annoying things about the place that I didn't notice until long after I moved in. So you either have to leave the hallway light on all the time, or you have to leave on a light at the other end of the hallway, or you are in a completely dark hallway.

As for conserving water, does not washing the dishes count? Probably not.

Not ready to get up and garden just yet, so it's breakfast and one more episode of Voyager.

Now that I have the computer back...

Okay, so my husband has gone out of town again to work the rest of this week's schedule. I won't get as much done in three days as I might have done in six, but we'll see if I get something done.

Today I will not be doing as much gardening stuff as I hoped, because I woke up with a bit of a backache. And it doesn't make any sense. I didn't do anything yesterday that would account for it. And I didn't do anything the day before yesterday that would explain it either. I didn't do that much stuff even Monday. I felt fine yesterday and the day before. We didn't even do that much to get tired. We only went out for two or maybe three hours, just to have lunch and do a little bit of shopping. We did not dig holes or move dirt or cut the grass or lift heavy stuff or buy bags of sand or move furniture. I have no idea what is wrong with me.

My mom called earlier this week and said that she wanted to take me to dinner. I don't want to go. I do not want to have dinner with my mother or talk to my mother or even call her back to tell her that I don't want to go. It will be the same old thing. I'm quite tired of it. At this point the main reason I even return her calls is just to make sure that she isn't calling to say that someone is in the hospital. If we are around other people, she will mostly behave herself, but one on one time with my mom always ends with yelling and crying and such.

She can't be avoided forever, but I am hoping to avoid her at least for the next three days.

Except for one pepper plant that looks almost dead, the rest of the garden plants are starting to look pretty good. A couple of squashes have sprouted, and I'm starting to see tiny little carrot sprouts and beet sprouts and a few radishes here and there. The tomatoes and herbs seem happy.

That doesn't mean that the garden is finished. I have a few things left to plant, and the rest of the backyard is a total mess. There are still big mounds of dirt to deal with. I had planned to get some of that done today, but now it doesn't seem like a good idea.

Now I have gone out to Home Depot and bought a few things. I have replaced the damaged pepper plant. I also got two bags of mulch (which are a bit heavy, but not so much as bags of sand), and had some lumber cut. I used the lumber and some hardware cloth to make a sort of screen to sift out rocks and lumps of clay out of the soil. My back still aches a bit, but maybe it will get better and I can get started on that soil tomorrow.

Now there are several wildfires in the general area, and a really major one in Oklahoma. I don't think that any of them are going cause problems for anyone I know, but they are large enough that there is smoke outside. I heard the one in Oklahoma was twenty-five miles long.

I've found an Outer Limits episode I was looking for on Hulu. They started with ten, but there are thirty-one now.

Two more days to myself.

More shopping with Mom

I believe Bulletholes called this an opportunity to learn patience.

Okay, my mom keeps saying how just the two of us need to get together and maybe go shopping or maybe go to lunch. Okay, I have no problem with that. Call me when you want to do something.

So after she keeps saying this, when she finally calls this week I feel bad that I don't want to go. I'm very busy this week. The party is Saturday, and the charity thing is Sunday, and as it is I'm thinking that I'm just going to skip the charity thing. I don't have the money for the charity thing, and the getting dressed up and such takes energy that I just don't feel right now. If I had a bit more time I could probably find that paper and do the gift basket thing that I normally do, but that's probably just not going to happen, and I think that I might feel better if I just don't go.

Except that my friend really wants me to go, and this is her big deal, and I hate to bail on her.

So I'm already busy with the knitting and such, and my mom wants to know if I can go shopping with her, at the mall, on Friday, at a sale that doesn't even start until four in the afternoon. On a normal day, this doesn't seem like such a good idea to me. If I want to go to the mall, it usually isn't on a weekend. Between Friday afternoon and Sunday evening there's lots of people, and I'd rather be there with less people. And I don't like being out late in the day, unless it's something I've planned for. If I go shopping, I like to go home before six, not just get started at four.

Oh, and it's a week before Christmas.

So even if I wasn't very busy, this already has a lot of things wrong with it that make it not seem like a good idea to me. But it seems like my mom really wants to go to this particular sale, and it's not like I can arrange to have the sale postponed. So, okay, I've got some stuff to do, but she called earlier in the week and I think that I might be done with everything by three or so on Friday.

Okay, on Friday morning, most of the stuff is done, except the stuff for charity that I've mostly given up on. But there's still a little time left to think about that, if I can just get this other stuff done. I have to finish up some leg warmers, trim the fringe on two scarves and put fringe on two more scarves, but one of those scarves isn't needed Saturday. I'd already found wrapping paper and boxes and even some bags, and after that a went out and bought a few more bags and some tape. So the wrapping isn't done, but I think I have time to get it done, once I finish up with the scarves and leg warmers. I'm still thinking that I can just about get all of this done by three, except for the one scarf that I don't need til later.

And my mom calls at 12:30 and asks if I still want to go with her.

Sure.

Then she asks if I'm ready to go.

No, I'm not ready to go. I still have stuff to do. I thought that I had until three.

So then she's wanting to know what stuff I have to do. She sounds a bit ticked that I'm not ready to go.

I don't really want to get into it. That wastes time that I could be actually doing the stuff instead of talking about doing the stuff. And I thought that the sale didn't start until four.

Well, she didn't want to be out late, and she thought that we could do some other stuff first and then maybe get something to eat. And even though the mall stays open late, she didn't really want to be out late.

Me, I don't like to be out past six, unless I've planned to do that. Do I need to plan to do that?

Well, no, not really.

I don't believe her, so I set the VCR to record Ghost Whisperer and some other stuff. I don't really think we're going to be out that late, but I figure I might as well be on the safe side.

Okay, so I figure if she'll let me get back to what I was doing, that I can do the stuff the absolutely has to be done, and then if we're not going to be out much past six I can still have time to do the rest of it after I get home.

She has an errand to run. She's going to call me when she's done with that.

Okay, so I finish putting the fringe on the third scarf, but I haven't trimmed any of the scarves or finished up on the leg warmers. I go and find all the boxes that each gift will go in, and get that all laid out, but I only get one present actually wrapped. Four things still are knitting that needs to be trimmed or finished up, so I can't wrap them. I'm going to wrap the other stuff when my mom calls and asks if I can do something for her on the way over.

Okay. I'm not done yet, and I wasn't supposed to be driving, she was supposed to pick me up. But I figure that I've got enough stuff done that I can do the rest if we don't stay out past six or seven. It's all laid out and ready to go, sort of. Okay.

So I go and get whatever my mom wanted and I leave the car and we head to the mall. Only we stop someplace first cause she has to return stuff at another store.

Okay, cause it's on the way, but I never return stuff unless it's broken or something. Returning stuff is my mom's main hobby.

And then there's the cell phone. I finally got a cell phone a couple of years ago, for emergencies. I have all of my original minutes, plus that amount again. I've only had one emergency, and I don't use the phone that much other than that. Most phone stuff can wait til I get home, and of course I would never talk on the phone while driving or anything else.

While we were in this store just to return something, my mom called someone to ask what the name of something was so she could look for it. Fine. But then the someone called back to talk about I don't know what, and then a family member called to talk about another family member's illness.

We are not even at the mall yet, and she's talked to people on the phone as much as she's talked to me. If anyone calls me while I'm out, I only answer the phone long enough to say that I'm busy and they will have to call back later. I wouldn't even do that, except that it's an emergency phone, so maybe the call is an emergency. But usually not. In fact, it's usually a wrong number or something.

Okay, so we finally get to the mall, where we return some other thing, and then we head to the sale. And I pick up a few things that I want to try on, and my mom is like, as long as you're here you should try on some other stuff.

I don't like trying on clothes. I almost said that I don't like shopping, but that really isn't true. But I don't enjoy the part of trying on the clothes, so unless there's a good chance that I'm going to buy it if it fits, I don't take stuff to the fitting room.

So off we go to the fitting room. And most of the stuff doesn't look good on me.

Okay, I'm done.

My mom says something like if I decide that I like those pants, we can always come back to get them on the way out. Okay. And then there are a few more things that maybe I would have tried on, but I didn't see them, and she says something like maybe we can try them on later, on the way out. Okay. So we go and eat.

And I hadn't really noticed that I was already tired until I sat down. But maybe I'll fill better after we eat. So we're in the food court, and we've come here to eat something, or so I thought. But it seems to take forever for my mom to decide what to eat. So then we eat, and my mom throws away half of her food. She had wanted to share something, but she didn't want anything that I wanted. Plus she has a cold. I don't want to share stuff with her when she has a cold, even if she is convinced that she's past being contagious.

The mall is very noisy, and I'm having to yell a bit to get her to hear me. Then we go back to the shopping, and after trying on a lot of stuff that doesn't look good on me, we buy some black pants, and she pays for mine and says it's a Christmas present.

Okay, it's past six, we have pants, time to go.

Only she wants to look at other dumb stuff that she has to get sometime, but not really right now. She sorts through the underwear and socks, but doesn't find what she's looking for.

At some point she says something about having to try on a bunch of stuff just to see how it looks. No, I don't have to try on a bunch of stuff just to see how it looks. In fact, I can keep wearing the same ugly stuff I have if I want to. One pair of black pants is a necessity, but the rest of this stuff isn't. And I really don't enjoy looking.

We go to pay for the pants, and she gets a phone call. This is one of those times when I would just refuse to answer the phone. The cashier has a job to do, and it's not to wait for people to have phone conversations with other people. But my mom answers the phone and talks a bit and doesn't get rid of the caller right away, so the checkout process is delayed while the cashier has to ask all of these "would you like fries with that" sort of things that she has to say even when it is clearly a waste of time, because if she gets caught not saying them she'll get written up or fired. My mom gets rid of the caller and pays for the pants.

Only then she returns the call. I wait some more.

Okay, we're finally back in the mall headed for the store where the car is parked. It is like seven and I'm tired and ready to go.

And we get to the store, and we're getting on an escalator. I don't like escalators. One level is okay, but more than that and I look for the elevator. But it's just the one floor, and we are getting on the escalator, and I'm looking at my feet.

And then my mother wheels around and says that she forgot that I didn't like escalators.

Okay, I would have been fine if she hadn't done that.

Do I want to get on the escalator?

I don't know, is that where the car is?

No, but we've got more shopping to do.

I'm done. I didn't want to be here this late.

Well, I'm not done. Aren't you going to come with me?

If we have to go downstairs, I'll get on the escalator, but I'd rather just go home.

But we've hardly looked at any of the sale stuff.

I don't know why we have been all over the rest of the mall if she still cared about that sale. I thought she'd looked at it and decided she didn't want any of it.

If we have to go downstairs, I'll get on the escalator, but just get out of my way. I can't get on the escalator if you keep doing stuff to distract me.

At this point I'm told that I'm very unpleasant to be around. Seriously, I should have just been rude and canceled the whole thing. I had stuff to do. Being at the mall on a Friday night the day before the party and a week before Christmas was the last place I wanted to be, I just came because I thought I should spend some time with my mother. I want to go home.

My mom finds a leather jacket that's normally more than two hundred but is on sale for less than fifty. And it looks really good on her. We try on some other stuff, but it doesn't look good. And she wanted to buy stuff for other people, but it was sold out. She should have bought it when we first got there and put it in the car.

But I at least thought that the leather jacket was worth it. And she bought the leather jacket, but then she's saying she wishes it was just a little different and she'll probably take it back.

Great. I was thinking that it was worth all this to get her the jacket that really looked good on her, but she's probably going to take it back.

Just right when we are finally leaving, I find some stuff that I might have liked, but I'm too tired to even think about it. Should have just told her to buy them, and then she could take them back when she returns the jacket. But I didn't think of that.

So we get in the car, and she's saying that she's thirsty. I say that I think that my throat is sore from having to talk over the noise in the mall.

That doesn't make your throat sore. You must have already had a sore throat and didn't know it.

Sure I did.

And the phone rings again, and she answers it, while driving. She talks to the other person most of the way home.

I really don't learn. I should never go shopping with mom, even if she is going to buy me stuff.

I get back to the car and thank her for the dinner and the pants. I get home past nine, and I'm too tired to work on knitting or anything. It isn't that much work, but I'm afraid that I'll make a mistake, so it will have to wait.

The party is at two, and I still have to do laundry and such.

Panic Time

Okay, today is Thursday, and I'm going to need most of the stuff on Saturday. Which means that except for maybe wrapping up some gifts, almost everything needs to be done by Friday. On Friday afternoon, I am sort of committed to doing some stuff with my mom. Which means that I won't have that much time to do stuff on Friday, and most of it needs to be done on Thursday.

Today is Thursday.

At least, I think that today is Thursday. I'm a little confused at this point.

On the knitting front, I think all the actual knitting is done now, though I'm wishing that I had done an extra scarf just in case. But I still have a lot of finishing up to do, mainly putting fringe on four scarves. So that's like eight hours of work to do, if it goes smoothly, which sometimes it does not.

After yesterday's shopping trip, which I had decided would be my last for the season (except for this thing that I'm doing with my mom tomorrow which won't result in getting any of my shopping done and is cutting it too close anyway), I still did not find a present for the pilot. After consulting with another friend, she's decided to give him DVDs, with gift receipts just in case he already has them. So I asked if she thought he had certain DVDs, which she knew he did, because he loaned them to her. So then I asked which ones she got for him, and then she told me I should get him the next one that had been on her list. Only the next one on her list was a comedy that I haven't seen, and I'm thinking that it's not a good idea to get someone a DVD of a movie that I either don't like or haven't seen, unless I've heard from him that's what he wants, which I haven't heard.

At this point I think I'm going to give up and give him one of the movies I bought from Walmart for two dollars, which he can't really return anyway, and a gift certificate for Blockbuster, and then he can pick out his own DVD. And, if he gets previously viewed videos, maybe he can get two or three.

Now, usually when I have to resort to this, I make a gift basket or something that doesn't look as boring as just giving someone a gift card. Usually I do this whole thing with candy and popcorn and such. Only I don't have the stuff to do that right now, and I don't really have the time to go and get it, or even the money to do that really. That's really annoying this year, that I don't have money for those last minute things.

Speaking of not having money for last minute things, I'm thinking of skipping the charity thing on Sunday. I didn't get them anything, and often I do not get them very much, but I usually get all dressed up and go, and I usually make this funny gift basket thing with candy. This year, I don't even have much money for that. It would cost about ten dollars to do what I normally do. I suppose that I could buy smaller candy, but the thing that makes it fun is redoing all the wrappers, and if I buy smaller candy I'll have to design all new wrappers, which I don't have time to do. Also, I don't see the paper I use, so I'd have to go buy more, which would be another five to ten dollars if I had to buy a whole pack of it. I should already have two or three packs of it here, I just can't seem to find any of it.

And then there's the dinner after the charity thing, which is fun and I wouldn't want to skip, but again there's that money problem. Plus I'll probably have to buy dinner Saturday night, so I'll have even less money. I can either have dinner on Saturday or Sunday, but probably not both.

On top of all that, the house is a terrible mess, maybe worse than it's been in a long time, and I cannot find anything. I'm having trouble even finding the stuff that is mostly organized, like wrapping paper and such. I know where the wrapping paper is, but not the boxes and bows and bags and tape. Which means that if I don't find them after I finish the knitting that I should have to go out and buy some more, which some of that money that I don't really have, etc....

Panic